Cursing with the Kids

My fellow parent-journalists at The Poop (The San Francisco Chronicle’s parenting blog) ran a hilarious and informative post on swearing in front of your kids, Mommy Has A Potty Mouth

Here is a sample:

“When my son was born, I didn’t stop swearing. I didn’t see the point. He’d hear the words out in the world anyway, and we were prepared to tell him that kids couldn’t talk like that. I even made fun of my friend Sophia when she said something like, “Oh fiddlesticks” when she dropped a sandwich at the playground recently.

I wasn’t laughing anymore when my 3-year-old son called his grandmother a “F—— Old Teapot” during dinner at Walzwerk recently.”

I struggle with those curse words as well, and I’ve tried to clean up my own potty mouth. But Working Son’s occasional minute-long monologues where he repeats one of my old favorites proves that I have a long way to go. So far, he is limited to the D word and shut up. (Shut up isn’t a curse, but it sure sounds like one when he yells at the dog.)

Basically, we follow the parenting rule of ignoring his cursing and hoping the behavior fades. We’re still waiting…(At least, he hasn’t gotten worse.) Further complicating our efforts is the fact that my wife and I don’t always agree on what words are curses. Moron, for example, seems fine to me.

After all these years in newsrooms, though, I agree I finally have to banish the MF word from my vocabulary. Damn.